Our goal was to identify different types of parenting based on self-report measures of fathers' involvement and parental attitudes. The present investigation studied 468 two-parent, FrenchCanadian families with at least one child between 0 and 6 years of age, living in a disadvantaged environment. The study, conducted on a sample of fathers, revealed the presence of the three basic types of parenting identified by Baumrind (authoritarian, authoritative and permissive), and also of a new type of parenting (stimulative parenting). The fathers in this latter group provide more emotional support to children and are more stimulating, as is evidenced by the greater psychological presence of children in the father's cognitions and by the fact that they more frequently introduce their children to new activities. These fathers are characterized by more secure social relationships. The father's parental stress level was found to be the most important variable discriminating between different types of fathering. Authoritarian and authoritative fathers are more at risk of maltreating their children because their more favourable attitude towards the use of physical punishment is combined with greater parental stress, less parental involvement of mothers, and a larger number of children in the home. Authoritarian fathers are even more at risk of maltreating their children because of more difficult family socioeconomic conditions, particularly lower levels of maternal education and income. Copyright

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Des travailleuses sociales, impliquées dans des interventions auprès de familles faisant l'objet de plaintes pour négligence envers un enfant, ont suivi avec l'auteur un atelier dont les objectifs étaient de prendre connaissance des concepts en approche écologique, de faire la jonction entre cette approche et la problématique dans laquelle elles oeuvraient, de fournir un contexte approprié à l'analyse des territoires et d'identifier des voies nouvelles d'intervention. Cet article est le produit des observations de fauteur et de ses discussions avec les intervenantes.

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La pauvreté ne correspond pas nécessairement à l'image de misère chronique et de résignation apprise et transmise de génération en génération ; cette image provient de ce que les services sociaux et de santé mentale accueillent et soutiennent principalement les familles à problèmes multiples, depuis longtemps aux prises avec cette condition de pauvreté. Pour une bonne partie des familles pauvres toutefois, cette condition est temporaire, et ce qui les distingue des non-pauvres est l'absence d'un revenu adéquat. Alors que les programmes d'intervention précoce ont fait la preuve que l'on pouvait intervenir préventivement auprès des enfants et des parents, et améliorer considérablement leur développement psycho-social, ils ne semblent pas avoir eu l'effet de diminuer, encore moins d'endiguer, la pauvreté elle-même. Ces programmes ont, pour la plupart, émergé d'une approche clinique orientée vers l'acquisition d'habiletés et de compétences par les individus touchés par la pauvreté. Les intervenants-es sont désormais invités-es à s'associer à celles et ceux qui tentent de modifier les conditions qui sont à la source même de la pauvreté.This article looks at poverty from the point of view that it does not necessarily correspond to the widespread image of chronic despair and resignation, acquired and transmitted from one generation to the next. The author argues such an image is produced by the fact that social and mental health services deal mainly with families at grips with multiple, long-standing problems. However, for most of these poor families, their condition is temporary. In fact, insufficient revenue is what distinguishes them from families that are not poor. While preventive programs show that early intervention is a proven approach towards considerably improving the psycho-social development of underpriveledged children and parents, little can be said about the effect of these programs on lowering, even less on eliminating, poverty itself. For the most part, these programs emerged from a clinical approach that encouraged poverty-stricken individuals to acquire new abilities and skills. The author concludes by promoting the need for more collaboration between those people offering the programs and those people who work towards changing the conditions at the root of poverty